Are you clear on your own set points between the data and your inner GPS?

Most of us are sub-consciously wonk-oriented by way of our cultural norms for valuing things like growth, numbers, domination and successive goal setting. At the same time, there is a universal ancestral wisdom and emerging cultural trend toward valuing values like compassion, partnership, inclusion, emergence, and transparency.

On the universal scale of yin and yang, Modern Industrial culture has highly valued the yang and seriously de-valued the yin. Just like electricity in the wall, it doesn’t work to have mostly one kind of charge. There’s a universal re-balancing going on and we’re all a part of it. Consciousness of that re-balancing brings greater ability to negotiate it.

Reflection Exercise: Take a few deep breaths. Once settled and centered, when you breathe in, imagine your breath going to that ever-shifting balance point between the wise and the wonky in your world. Breathe out any tension, charge, disorientation or unsettledness.

Practice everyday until you sense equanimity with that ever-dynamic balance point.

I went to a talk on human trafficking in my county the other night, a few months after I went to an eye-opening debriefing at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. The bottom line is it’s part of the international and local cultural fabric we function within every day. We have sex and labor slaves in our neighborhoods, at the mall and along our roadways. And one of our recent purchases – like a cheap dress or a chocolate bar – may well have capitalized the trade.

Slave trading is hardwired into the receding economic paradigm that fundamentally values people by a very narrow set of parameters. People are trafficked along drug routes but the payoff is much better for the dealer because once a quantity of drugs is sold, more supply has to be produced and transported. But humans can be sold many times over for long periods of time. Slavery has its place in modern Capitalism.

Because it doesn’t factor in wellbeing, business-as-usual misses the most important drivers of prosperity. New Paradigm leadership accounts for cultural capital and that opens up a much wider spectrum of outcomes. Slavery is a cultural virus that is in the DNA of the old profit-at-any-cost paradigm. The injustices of slavery can’t be solved only by abolishing routes and traders. The model of a New Paradigm gives us ground to evolve toward contextualizing slavery as a historical reference. It’s not about fixing the slavery problem, it’s about a New Paradigm ground of being that simply can’t accommodate slavery’s roots.

And I had the privilege of speaking with James Quilligan about the Commons and why happiness matters in terms of economics, human suffering and development. Over 35 organizations including the Media-Upper Providence Free Library, Media Theater, Tyler Arboretum, School in Rose Valley, Montessori School, churches, and businesses. Even though Flash Mob success was Media Borough’s traffic nightmare, they were also good friends in making this happen.

I co-created this with Transition Town Media members as Heart and Soul Committee chair. What an amazing group of people to work with!